


Common Ground

by rangerhitomi



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Language Barrier, M/M, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:20:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3408713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/pseuds/rangerhitomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fillathon prompt: "Mizael/Durbe, past lives with a language barrier"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Common Ground

The golden-haired man spits out words Durbe does not understand; he has a sword in his hand, taking forceful steps closer and Durbe’s sword is slack because he’s tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of seeing people hurt. Tired of war. Tired of death. The man keeps coming, closer and closer and Durbe tries to plead with him  _please, I mean you no harm_  but it is ineffective.

Durbe finally drops his sword and falls to his knees. If this stranger wishes to kill him, perhaps he deserves it for failing his king.

There’s a pause in the other man’s dance, and his sword lowers ever so slightly. He contemplates Durbe for a moment; he contemplates the bloodstained sword lying near Durbe, contemplates the battered, dull armor that once glistened like a mirror but is smeared with blood that isn’t his, contemplates the sorrow and grief and  _guilt_ etched into every line of Durbe’s travel-weary face, and finally lowers his sword.

He says a word too fast for Durbe to grasp it and places his hand to his chest. Durbe holds out his hands and tilts his head questioningly. The man gives a heavy sigh and leans forward, repeating the word. This time, Durbe can make it out.

“Mizael.”

Durbe repeats the word and points at the man, who nods.

“Is that your name?” Durbe asks, but the man narrows his eyes at Durbe and prods a finger in Durbe’s direction.

If Mizael is this man’s name, maybe he wants to know his. “Durbe.”

Mizael sounds the name out and it sounds… strange, coming from the lips of a foreigner – but then, Durbe thinks wryly, who’s the real foreigner here?

With a moment’s hesitation, Mizael steps forward and offers a hand to the knight. The bright moonlight highlights Mizael’s golden hair and accents his skin. He looks ethereal, ghostly. Durbe reaches out a hesitant hand to take Mizael’s when he hears a low growl and looks past Mizael in alarm.

He screams in a strangled voice and scrambles for his sword; Mizael is yelling, yelling at him, yelling at the  _dragon behind him,_ but Durbe’s heart is pounding and after all he’s been through, he’s not going to die because of a dragon.

The other knights had always talked about slaying dragons and finding princesses locked in towers, but Durbe had never been interested in any of that. He just wanted to see the world, and got more than he’d bargained for.

Mizael’s sword is in his hand again and he’s yelling at Durbe incomprehensibly, and Durbe yells back but knows that Mizael can’t understand any more of his language than he of Mizael’s, but Mizael doesn’t seem frightened of the dragon. He seems protective of it, so Durbe releases his sword again and climbs to his feet.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, holding out his hands in what he hopes is a peaceable way. Sorrow tugs at his heart again as he recalls his first meeting with the man he would come to call his best friend. It was much like this, with neither understanding the other, and Durbe had spent months gaining the young prince’s confidence.

He fears he doesn’t have months to get into Mizael’s good graces.

He just wants to leave this land and return home to die.

Mizael lowers his sword again and pulls his shoulders back in an almost royal haughtiness. It almost makes him laugh, if he wasn’t preoccupied with the fact that this man was probably friends with a dragon, a creature of myth.

But then, Mach was a creature of myth, yet Durbe had befriended him and Mach had never let him down, so maybe Durbe sympathized with the man, in a way.

“Jinlong,” Mizael announces, waving his hand at the dragon. He says a couple more words and it’s clear what their meaning is from the affectionate look Mizael casts toward the dragon.  _My friend._

Durbe licks his lips and he’s surprised to find them trembling. “Mach,” he offers, gesturing at his companion. “My friend.”

* * *

Mizael’s home is halfway up the mountain, and Jinlong sleeps curled up outside. Durbe is terrified to leave Mach out there alone with the beast and he tries to tell Mizael so, but the man just frowns at him and mutters under his breath in whatever language he’s speaking before handing Durbe a blanket and gesturing at a pallet in the corner. A quick glance around the one-room home tells Durbe that if he takes the bed, Mizael will have nowhere to sleep, and he tries to act out his discomfort using vague hand gestures and facial contortions, which results in nothing but Mizael laughing at him and pushing him on the bed in his armor.

Durbe is embarrassed and humiliated and angry, and even more so when Mizael begins to slowly pull off his shoes and belt and armbands, pointing at Durbe in between taking off each piece. His meaning is plain.  _Your turn._

Things might be different in whatever this land is, but in Durbe’s homeland, undressing in front of others was only acceptable when it was more than one person, so Durbe pulls his arms closer to his body and shakes his head. “No.”

Mizael crosses his arms and nods.

Durbe crosses his arms tighter and shakes his head.

They stare at each other for a moment before Mizael kneels on the stone floor near the pallet. It’s probably uncomfortable and cold, but Mizael doesn’t seem to mind, at least outwardly, but Durbe feels bad for taking the bed so he makes to get off again but Mizael throws out a hand, catches Durbe in the chest, and pushes him back.

“Durbe,” Mizael says slowly, and the name rolls off his tongue awkwardly. He says it again, and again, each time pronouncing it differently until Durbe repeats it for him. Mizael says it one last time and Durbe nods encouragingly. The way he says it is sharp, forceful, nothing at all like the respectful way his king would say it.

“Mizael,” Durbe says, and Mizael smiles.

“Durbe.” Mizael points at Durbe’s breastplate and says a few words. Durbe interprets it to mean  _take that off._ Mizael makes a gesture with his head on his hands and closes his eyes; it was, perhaps,  _you need sleep._

It has been a journey of thousands of miles, and Durbe travelled all this way with no destination in mind to forget about his failures as a knight.

So he slowly removes his gauntlets, his boots, his knee guards… but he needs an extra hand to help with the fastenings on his breastplate unless he wants to be awkwardly fumbling with his arms at bizarre angles, so he reluctantly points to Mizael and then at the general direction of the fastenings. Mizael frowns again and scoots closer, lifting Durbe’s arm and fumbling with the clasps as Durbe flushes with embarrassment. Finally, he gets it off, and Durbe is left in a light, bloodstained undershirt and light trousers. He probably smells, and the way Mizael wrinkles his nose confirms it.

“I’m sorry,” Durbe mutters, “it’s been a long flight and I have not bathed in many days.”

Mizael clearly understands none of that, but he takes Durbe’s hand and drags him from the bed and out the front door; it’s a slightly chilly night and Durbe shivers. He’s not used to the cold just yet. He had lived in a warm, often hot climate for most of his life, and it was summer when he left there. Mizael makes a gesture that reminds Durbe of a person rubbing himself, and takes it to mean that Mizael was showing him to a bath.

It’s freezing.

He splutters as Mizael pushes him into the small pool of water, clothes and all, and Mizael says something in an amused voice before tossing some kind of sappy plant at him. It has a pleasant scent even though Durbe wants nothing more than to climb out of the water and run for a fire as soon as he could. But there’s no fire in sight and they’re too far from the house for Durbe to make it back there without possibly freezing to death and he’s not sure if Mizael is genuinely trying to make him smell better or trying to kill him.

Durbe thinks that the only way to make this plant effective is to remove his clothing, and he certainly isn’t doing that while Mizael is watching, so he attempts some hand motions that he thinks are indicative of the fact that he’s _very cold_ – he rubs his arms and shivers (though he didn’t really need to mimic that; he was doing it well enough before) and with shaking hands pretends to be warming by a fire. Mizael narrows his eyes for a second but finally nods, and heads back in the direction of the house. Durbe takes a deep breath and peels his clothes from his frozen body, tossing them on the grass outside the pool, and rubs the plant over himself and his hair. He’s just pulling his head out of the water when Mizael comes back, holding a blanket, and Durbe can see a flickering fire nearby.

Mizael looks away pointedly as Durbe steps out of the pool and takes the blanket, wrapping himself tightly in it. He makes to pick up his clothes but Mizael grabs his arm and says something, pointing at the sky directly above before pointing at the clothes and making a rubbing motion with his hands.

“I can wash them tomorrow?” Durbe says, and Mizael shrugs. But they go to the fire together.

Durbe is still shivering violently when they sit side-by-side by the fire. Mizael is studying him intently, from his hair to his eyes, down his blanketed body to his toes sticking out. He bends down and picks up a stick, drawing a picture in the dirt. Mizael is a decent artist, and draws what is unmistakably his dragon – Jinlong – hovering over a village, with a long-haired figure standing with its arms reaching for the dragon.  Mizael says something long-winded, and the only thing Durbe can gather from the picture is that Mizael and the dragon are protectors of the village. Durbe understands; he was a protector too, of sorts. Mizael hands the stick to Durbe.

“Durbe?” he offers, lifting his eyebrows, and Durbe closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to recount what he had been through.

But maybe sharing with this stranger who spoke a completely foreign tongue and knew only Durbe’s name would help him.

So Durbe begins his tale, mumbling along with each picture he draws – flying from his kingdom to a kingdom of islands, befriending the prince and princess.

Watching the prince become king, watching the princess sacrifice herself to satisfy the gods, watching his adopted kingdom being ravished by the wicked prince, preparing for war.

Being helpless to save his comrades who died, one by one, around him.

Cradling his king’s lifeless body as he wondered why he had survived.

Mizael’s hand grips Durbe’s.

His hand is shaking, or maybe it is Durbe who was shaking and it only felt like Mizael was. When he looks up at Mizael, he sees… sorrow. Sympathy. He doesn’t want sympathy, or pity. But Mizael places a hand on his heart before taking the stick from Durbe’s hand and snapping it in half.

“Durbe,” Mizael says solemnly, holding up the broken sticks to his heart. He says a phrase.

“Heart broken,” Durbe whispers, and Mizael repeats the phrase.

“Home?”

Durbe feels the tears fall from his eyes and he looks away in shame. “Gone.”

Mizael stands and pulls Durbe to his feet; Durbe tightens the blanket as they move away from the warmth of the fire to the edge of the cliff where Mizael’s house sits. He waves his hand across the small village.

“Mizael home.”

Durbe nods as he looks up at the man, so much taller than himself. He grasps Durbe’s language much quicker than Nasch had.

Mizael turns his head and places his hand over Durbe’s chest. “Mizael home, Durbe home. Durbe heart broken… no.”

Durbe squeezes the tears from his eyes and smiles up at Mizael with a quivering mouth. “Thank you.”

They gaze out at the village together for a few moments longer, and Durbe wipes his eyes on the corner of the blanket. He supposes he can stay here until his heart has mended enough to return to the only duties he has left in the world. 


End file.
